Currently I’m reading Nina Burton’s ‘Livets tunna väggar’ which translate to something like Walls of Life. It’s a book by a Swedish writer who inherits her mother’s summer house. When she wants to renovate it, she finds all sort of life around and in the house. She uses said life to teach you something about the intellect of various insects and animals, which goes deeper than humans normally think.
It’s a very interesting book that makes me think about non-human life even more. Creatures that are thousands of times smaller than we are have such complex societal structures. Humans have overcommodified animal life for centuries now, seeing them as property and commodities instead of complex and intelligent life forms.
What are you reading?
I finished The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State last week and then decided to finish this chunk of my deep dive in theory with Critique of the Gotha Programme.
My next big focus is gonna be in anarchist theory so I picked 2 small pieces to read through to get a basic understanding: An Anarchist Programmer by Errico Malatesta and Are You An Anarchist by David Graeber.
Before I actually jump in to that I wanna get a few more chapters knocked out of Inventing Reality and Killing Hope though. I’m having a hard time deciding on Conquest of Bread or Anarchy Works for my next book though.
I don’t know anything about Anarchy Works, but the Bread book is a classic, and I’ve heard there’s a lot of good stuff in there.
I really really like the first three chapters which explain practically that the purpose of society should be for the benefit of all. After that point, he gets like hyper-fixated on minutaea like greenhouses and how much a shirt should cost.
Did someone say “how much a shirt should cost?”
Whereas Marx used the shirt as a REPRESENTATIVE SYMBOL of where value is in the labor process, Kropotkin was an idealist navel gazer. IM NOT OWNED IM NOT OWNED!!! /j
Anarchy Works was recommended on a few reddit posts while I was looking for books to add. It seems like a modern take on the theory. Conquest of Bread has been on my list since I started reading theory because it’s so highly regarded. The question is, do I wanna keep reading really old stuff and get the foundation or read something more modern for a change of pace?
I do plan on reading both this next year though.
I just realized ironically Anarchy works is on my reading list while the Conquest of Bread isn’t. Have you read other old anarchist stuff yet? If not it might be better to get the early anarchist reading done before you get to the modern adaptations so you can see how it changed. I should read both at some point too.
This is my first foray into anarchist theory so I really only know a bit about mutual aid and sef-association so far, outside of the concepts that overlap more with ML, the state, police, church, etc.
I have tried listening to Anarchy and other Essays by Goldman but realized I really wasn’t paying attention so I will start that over at some point. I also have some more Errico Malatesta and some Daniel Guerrin on my list. I think Guerrin might be more modern though. I did toss God and State by Bakunin on there as well. There is a few counter argument pieces I wanna get to but that will be for later.